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Tuesday, 20 September 2016

India needs to rethink a whole lot of new things specially after URI!

The attack
on soldiers sleeping between shifts of active vigil in temporary shelters at
the camp is suggestive of a well-planned fidayeen attack by terrorists who
obviously had intelligence guiding their operation.

The powder keg that is the Kashmir
Valley has exploded once again with the year's biggest strike by terrorists on
an Army camp in Uri, in J&K's Baramulla district. If it is firmly established
that this was yet another cross-border attack exported by Pakistan, it is bound
to lead to a bigger diplomatic blow-up with a neighbour, whose support of
terror as state policy is too well documented to lend merit to its denials.

This strike was bigger than the
January siege of the Pathankot airbase in which seven military personnel were
killed. With 17 soldiers killed in Uri and at least another 20 injured, this
was in fact the biggest casualty the Army has suffered in many years. Amid an
alert across the country, India needs a major rethink not only on its
preparedness to tackle terror by infiltration across the border or Line of
Control - there is reason to believe the breach on the LoC was through the
Salamabad Nullah from PoK - but also on its policy priorities regarding
Pakistan.

This attack on soldiers sleeping
between shifts of active vigil in temporary shelters at the camp is suggestive
of a well-planned fidayeen attack by terrorists who obviously had intelligence
guiding their operation. The Bihar and Dogra Regiment soldiers' temporary
sleeping tents catching fire made the toll worse; but it's also suggestive of
what conditions brave Armymen are placed in. By identifying the weapons and
clothing of the Uri attackers, it should be possible to clearly establish the
Pakistani hand in yet another strike on Kashmir. This will lend weight to what
India has been saying at all major global forums recently about Pakistan's role
in fuelling the insurgency in Kashmir. It is immaterial whether that will change
anything in that country, that grandstands its fate as a victim of terror,
losing 9,065 lives in 2015.

It's obvious that the attack on the
Army camp on Uri was meant to provoke an Indian reaction, which in turn would
give Pakistan a peg to demand international intervention in Kashmir at the UNGA
session in New York. Yet doing nothing but mouthing the same tired platitudes
about 'not resting till the perpetrators are brought to justice' and how
"we will avenge our martyrs" is no longer enough for a population
demanding a swift and befitting Indian retribution.

The strike, which caught our
soldiers off guard, is to be seen as retaliation through increased terror
operations in the wake of India's Balochistan policy thrust, by which moral and
political support is to be given to the rebels, including the Balochis living
in exile. The coming UN General Assembly session is bound to get quite vocal
with the latest instance of what is certainly an attack inspired by Pakistan,
rather than the "lone wolf" attacks that crop up in many parts of the
world. India's latest billion-dollar move to bring Afghanistan even closer in
diplomatic terms is part of an overall strategy to put the heat on Pakistan.
What the Indian Army has lost in so many soldiers dead and injured is a human
tragedy we should not lose sight of as we reassess our responses to the naked
threat of terror.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh's
assertion that Pakistan is a terrorist state which needs to be isolated tells
us nothing new.

All earlier attempts to
"isolate" Pakistan after terror attacks on India were eventually
followed by 'cricket diplomacy' or yet another olive branch from India,
sometimes under pressure from the US. So what are the options before New Delhi
as it grapples with an intrasigent neighbour which uses terror as an instrument
of state policy, using ISI lapdogs like the JeM and LeT?

For India’s political leadership to
craft a meaningful strategic response to this crisis, though, will require that
both self-deception and bluster are excised from their vocabulary. First up, by
all accounts, the Uri strike was not, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi described
it on September 18, a “cowardly terror attack”. The attack appears to be,
instead, part of a well-thought through strategy designed to breathe life into
the Kashmir jihad, carried out by an adversary who has come to understand
India’s strategic and tactical limitations. BJP leader Ram Madhav’s promise of
“for one tooth, the complete jaw” may play well on television — but the
generals across the border apparently calculate that his claim that the “days
of so-called strategic restraint are over” is easier made than done.

And it is. Ever since 26/11, at
least, India’s strategic conundrum has remained the same: How might Pakistan be
deterred from sponsoring terrorism, without ending up in a conflict that
jeopardises India’s big strategic aim, high economic growth? The easy-reach
answers — cross-border shelling, or raids on Pakistani forward pickets — will
achieve little; they did not deter Pakistan from 1990 to 2001, when the Line of
Control was ablaze. Targetting jihadist leaders inside Pakistan might work
better, but could invite reprisals, which India’s police forces and
intelligence services haven’t been prepared for. Full-scale conflict, of
course, is possible —but the outcomes are always uncertain, more so in a
nuclear battlefield. The choices are hard, the stakes are high. Reason rather
than rage should mark the road ahead.

A swift military strike against
terrorist camps in Pakistan occupied Kashmir has often been considered and then
rejected on the grounds that it could escalate into a full-scale war. While the
Indian Army asserts that it has the capability to carry out such a strike, the
politicians worry about provoking a nuclear armed neighbour. Getting mercenary
outfits or even special forces to take out people like Masood Azhar and Hafiz
Mohammad Saeed is easier said than done. The other viable option is to make it
increasingly 'expensive' for Pakistan to conduct such terrorist strikes. PM
Modi's recent move to highlight the atrocities in Balochistan is a step in that
direction. The other option is to turn the tables on Pakistan by using this
attack to divert international attention from Kashmir to the scourge of
terrorism and human rights violations in Balochistan. But that does not mean
that we give up on plans to use the Cold Start doctrine which we have been
honing since the attack on Parliament in 2001.

India
will hit back whosoever when obviously it’s beyond the level of tolerance, if
the govt. is set aside or be mum.